


bargain

by hinotorihime



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, au where jon communicates with his friends, canon-typical worms, slight vague spoilers for 111
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 08:18:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15577686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinotorihime/pseuds/hinotorihime
Summary: Maybe Jonshouldn'thave finally agreed to actually tell his assistants what's going on. Because now, they've taken it on themselves to secure him alliances.





	bargain

A young man walks down an alley and knocks twice on a door. It is legs that answer-- black, spindly, and hairy. The conversation is brief and quiet. A pale, freckly hand touches a furry hook, and then the spider retreats back into its burrow, and Martin Blackwood continues to walk.

He stops by the harbour, chatting easily with a salt-haired sea captain. In a park that seems larger than it should be, he murmurs to a man with curlicue scars arcing over his face. He passes by the cafe where Melanie is drinking coffee, sitting by a real estate agent whose fingers are far too long and far too sharp. He keeps going, fringe flopping over his face in the sunlight.

* * *

They had all sat around the table and looked at each other. The Eye was watching, and they did not need to explain to one other.

Melanie was the first to speak, and what she said was: _if helen needs convincing, it should be me._ Her brisk tone was well-done, but Martin remembered her face as she read through Lydia Halligan's statement, and knew how much it would cost her, and knew that she knew he knew. She wouldn't have offered, if she weren't terrified. That's-- well, that's the point.

 _i like pressure,_ said Basira matter-of-factly. _it calms me._

Tim said nothing; they did not look at him. He stared into his beer with a strange expression twisted onto his lips.

 _do you think it'll be enough?_ said Martin. His fingers were drumming on the tabletop. they're just archival assistants. they're just people. if it's not enough the world will end. _can it possibly be enough?_

Tim stirred.

 _it'll have to be,_ he said in a low voice that had a rehearsal in a forgotten theatre echoing hard and cold through every vowel.

* * *

Jon doesn't know. Peter Lukas laughed when he agreed to keep it secret.

Martin had only met Michael Shelley a few times before his death, and he doesn't remember enough about the man to know if a comparison to him is a compliment or not. Peter does not tell him that Michael Shelley would have done anything for his Archivist, and it had not been Peter's responsibility to tell Gertrude Robinson how to do her job but he had thought that it was more fair and more interesting, when your plan hinged on someone that blindly loyal, to let them make the choice for themself; and Peter does not say to Martin Blackwood that he wonders now about that assessment. What he does say--and it's completely true-- is that Michael Shelley seemed a nice kid, and he watches Martin's lonely, lovely face twitch upward in something like pride.

(Peter doesn't tell Martin that a good kid like Michael Shelley wouldn't have gone behind his Archivist's back in order to save her. He doesn't say that Gertrude Robinson didn't deserve that, and she knew it, and Jonathan Sims possibly does deserve this, exactly because he doesn't know it.

Peter does not say any of this. But he thinks it all the same, in a voice that sounds uncomfortably like Evan's.)

* * *

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: a woman smoothes down her shirt, adjusts her wrinkled hijab, and walks into a cave. She knows it will not be her that comes out. Perhaps fiddling with her clothes is her way of hesitating, of taking a few moments to memorize the feel of the open sky, but it doesn't show on her face.

* * *

The End doesn't care, and the Hunt is too disorganized. Ruin is firmly allied with the Circus. Where, then, does that leave us?

None of them claim the idea. If it had been theirs, they would have done it alone.

* * *

A man summons every ounce of his willpower and makes his way into the tunnels beneath Pall Mall Street. He is tired, he's so tired, he wants nothing more than to be surrounded by darkness, wants to finally just rest. He pushes that feeling outward, so the clammy-feeling air can detect it. His brother's ghost dances beside him.

* * *

They say the same thing, words quiet and steady.

If the Stranger ascends, where will your power come from? If the Eye ascends, where will you hide?

* * *

The woman in the cafe made it out with only a scratch on her cheek from a cold, twisted finger. But she is a professional; she always has a backup plan. The box cutter in her hand is warm against her skin as she stands before a creature in a tattered brown suit, setting up a portable keyboard, all six of its weeping eyes fixed on her.

* * *

Elias freezes, Looks again, buries his face in frustration. He knows better than to think Jon sent the young fools out. And there's all the careful work to prepare them, wasted. He'll just have to get rid of them all now.

* * *

A man with red fringe flopping over his face walks into a basement, and Jonathan Sims stops mid-statement and stands abruptly up at his desk, cursing, eyes wide with sudden knowledge, still-human heart pounding with pain.

There is nothing he can do to stop them.

* * *

Martin opens his arms and says softly:

_let me be your home._

The first of the worms reaches his bare foot and begins to burrow.

**Author's Note:**

> my friend gave me some drabble prompts to entertain me while i'm stuck in the car for 13 hours.  
> this...is not a drabble.


End file.
